Unbelievable cool video. Thank you for all you've done for the community of old Mac users, your patches have helped me keep so many of my machines useful!
In 1986 I cut out the 64k of memory from my first Mac and soldered in 128k with guidance from Dr. Dobbs Journal. Thought that was pretty cool but my oh my how times change! Brilliant work, sir, kudos to you!
It's amazing they sold this machine up until the end of 2018. We still have some of them in our labs. and we specced them pretty well at the time, they had the 2.6ghz i5, 256GB SSD and 8GB RAM. They run terribly today on Monterey, and it's officially supported! Yet we have 2012 i5 iMacs with after-market SSDs added and they run like a dream on Monterey using OCLP.
I am writing this from a Mac Mini 2014, 2.6ghz i5, 512GB SSD and 8GB Ram... and I am not agree with your statement "they run terribly today on Monterey". As a matter of fact, it runs smooth. I do Photoshop and Lightroom, Internet, Excel with no problem at all.
From a tinkerer perspective it's amazing what you did there, complete desoldering/reballing/resoldering plus programming of bios, I draw my hat and fully heartily applaud this work and dedication. From a non mac users perspective... why is there no slot for ram and a socket for cpu? Yes I now, new ultrabooks are also guilty of soldered on cpu/ram/ssd, but up till 2013/2014 the larger notebooks still had replaceable cpu/ram and ssds. And desktops, we don't have to talk, they are fully upgradeable in most cases.
It forced you to buy the larger capacity models or ram upgrades at purchase at a significantly higher price, as you could never upgrade. I dare say it perhaps also made them more reliable being soldered ,but I’m not sure to what extent - if any. I was waiting for the 2014 to come out so I could upgrade for a much earlier model, and when it did and I saw the soldered ram and cpu, I immediately bought the just superseded quad core whose ram and storage you could upgrade - and having two more cores was a lot faster.
Yeah, good linux knowledge and non Apple hardware makes life easier. But i love my 2012 airbook which rocks Pop OS and honestly, for many years there were no comparable pc notebooks and still today build quality is impressive. So i understand the attraction of Apple devices.... And the M cpus are impressive again. Wait for mature linux support😉
Some of the older Macs had the ability to change ram and hdd but they where finicky with what ram would work it was nice though, I guess its now a bit of both upselling the higher models instead of user upgradeable plus smaller form factors making it harder to replace.
I can say regarding the CPU as to why they moved away from CPU's in both windows Laptops and MacBook's, One is that it results in an overall thinner devices and the other is from DDR3 based devices - the Signal integrity dependent (rise and fall time of high speed digital signals like DDR3 is very small order of few pico seconds - having a socket CPU adds metal socket pins adds more impedance discontinuities which in turn results in delays / corruption /slows down of these rise / fall times. with a soldered BGA CPU you minimize these impedance anomaly- this is wht they eliminated the socket cpu approach ).
I've watched this in absolute awe. This is a great work of art I'll never be able to perform. Well done, mate! Keep it up! I'll just save money for my new Mac Mini M2 by the end of the year. There's no way I'll find someone as competent as you to do such a thing and still make it affordable.
Holy hell! I thought I was cool upgrading my 2012 mini with 16G of RAM and 256 SSD. This is hardcore. Well done! I love my mini! Have Big Sur on it and for daily home stuff it works great. At my work office I have the latest Apple gear. EDIT: Geekbench 704 / 1726 with the i7 / 2.6Ghz / 16G / SSD / 4000 Graphics.
@@abduujabor well you’re not supposed to get Monterey for Mac mini (late 2012) since it’s not “compatible” (which is a stupid lie apple made up) for it. But the thing is, you actually can get it! It’s just that you have to use open core legacy patcher (which is easy to use) and you need a 16+ USB flash drive to be able to use and get Monterey. Here is the link to the video of it happening. It’s actually works and it’s legit. Link: th-cam.com/video/McmO7xP4wvI/w-d-xo.html (Edit) I also recommend having 16 gb of ram (which is easy to change and it’s the most a Mac mini can take) to make the experience faster.
Reballing that apu is the most difficult part because of the warping you mentioned, on the 10th gen intel had to glue a metal support bracket to the corners to avoid It
More great work thanks Collin. Any chance of showing us the board pre-heater that you use please? Thanks EDIT - I found the answer in one of the comments. Cheers. hot air station, Puhui T8280 preheater, Madell QK853 preheater, and Aoyue 4545W nozzle for doing the large BGAs.
Great job on the hardware upgrades and restoration. I'm sure the switch to an ssd will make overall everyday tasks faster and quieter and cooler operation
Very impressed by dosdude1's skill and precision. This is way above my pay grade. Will say this: I've a 2012 Mac Mini, the last Mini where both RAM and drives were socketed (not soldered) and so upgrades there were plug and play. The CPU of my old Dell Latitude was not soldered either so upgrading that was also simple for this klutz. All of which is to lament that newer tech, with glued cases and soldered everything, requires dosdude1 level expertise to service.
I still have one of the 2014 i7 Minis as a daily driver, but unfortunately only 8GB Ram, which starts to become a problem these days. Also, while it has a factory SSD, that one is very slow - slower than a budget sata SSD these days. Upgrading the SSD could help, soldering more ram myself is far out of my league, and getting someone else to do it would be expensive enough to rather save up for a used 16Gig M1 mini. Still, it's awesome to see that it can be done. Great video, dosdude1 !
i think the surface tension of the solder is strong enough to warp the hot chip when you take it off the board with the vacuum pump.try next time to flip it next on a paper towel with tweezers from the sides.i have removed cpus with tweezers aswell with 0.5mm metal blade tool.but overall you are a pro :D .keep up the good work
That really will be breathing new life into that machine. I think the i7 from that generation was a proper hyperthreaded quad core even in the 13" Macbook Pro, though it may have still been the lower powered variant. Still, it should work wonderfully with the upgraded processor and memory. Always fun to watch people keep these older machines viable with electronic wizardry. Edit: I was mistaken, the i7 u series from that generation was only a dual-core processor. How disappointing. Still, just getting a substantially faster clock speed will make a world of difference for that mac, as will the upgraded graphics. At least as far as general computing goes. Intel Iris was never a gaming powerhouse, but it's perfectly capable for general UI tasks and video playback.
Very interesting, but too difficult for a nebbie. You are a master technician. It have been super interesting for me to known the technologie for smd circuits reparing. Thanks.
I'm on a late 2014 mac mini with 4gb ram and an ssd. I think the ssd makes all the difference for me. This computer as is with the ssd is fantastic. Thanks for the information and the how to. You're super talented.
Going to need this video now. Knowing nothing about Mac mini's I bought a 2014 Mac mini, base model. Opps, soldered on RAM :) Going to fit this into a G4 "lampshade" iMac. "
The performance improvement wasn’t as dramatic as 1.4GHz vs 3GHz would suggest because of turbo boost It’s really 2.7GHz peak vs. 3.5GHz peak. Roughly 30% more performance from 30% higher peak clockspeed 👍
@@MrKillswitch88 how do i make my 2014 mac mini handle more garageband audio tracks and plugins, i went with an external usb 3.0 samsung 870 QVO and that brought me to 400 MB/s read writes which helped, but i am looking for more tweaks?
Hell Yea! Great Work Sir. New to Apple due to the M1, after finding your tutorials I traded a pile of old PC Boneyard collection for some 2011 & 2012 minis; just to learn how apple did things. Thanks for the help!
@@jpht1964 my bad, you never know nowadays. But he makes it look so easy, that is what triggered me into not recognising sarcasm ;) You only need a few tools and some software..
What this machine deserves! I used to have one of the base model 2014 Mac minis, it was one of my first computers, and I have to say I think it's probably one of the worst Macs Apple ever made. Especially with the 5400rpm hard drive and it is slooooow. Even on the stock operating system it's hard to bear and it got much worse with APFS (and I assume further updates after that, I got rid of mine and switched to Windows!)
Yes, it is very slow. It is a good practice to test your patience. It takes about 8 minute boot time with Big Sur. I replaced the MacOS with several Linux distros. And they run very fast. I'm glad I didn't give it to Apple to be recycled.
My experience is a bit different. I just bought this exact model for $140 USD (very cheap in Australia.. we pay more for all our technology, sadly) and first thing I did after booting into the 5400rpm HDD was put an existing 500gb Samsung Evo 850 SSD into it. Took 45mins tops, used a steel coat hanger to remove the motherboard, and it is absolutely awesome now for what I need (a second Mac for general tasks - email and web browsing). No slowness now, and I have to have quite a lot of apps open to stress it. It even runs Monterey natively (unlike my better specced mid-2014 MacBook Pro), which is apparently faster than Big Sur or whatever the most recent one was called.
A little like having a Time Machine. Over the years, I’ve always bit the bullet with whatever cannot be readily updated, and I’ve never once regretted it. My Macs serve me for an embarrassingly long time mostly due to that up front cash drop. Apple’s campaign against people like me means no new Macs. I’m still in the early to mid 2010s with all of my computers except for the iPadPro I’m typing this on. They are all business tools for me so upgradability is essential. Colleagues marvel at the age of machine I use with modern OS and more importantly, 2023 Pro Tools versions. Now if I could just shave a few pounds off my MBP 6,2 for flying.
Really nice video. Thanks for the entertainment. Its a bit sad 2014 mac mini has only a 2 core cpu, which makes late 2012 mac mini a better choice both by the fact that you can upgrade ram and the i7 CPU being better in multi core performance thanks to the 4 cores and 8 threads and the 2012 i5 is a bit better than the 2014 i5. There is a plus however, 2014 mac mini consumes way less power than the 2012.
First video of yours I've seen. Absolutely phenomenal job. I pulled the BIOS chip off of my 2014 Mac mini main board, dumped it, modified it, reflashed it, and resoldered it, but this is so beyond any of that. My only question is what is the motivation for this over buying something used (even the exact model you're upgrading to) or some other option? The challenge? Learning? Fun? Because I can't imagine any cost "savings" having to buy a Mac donor board + RAM chips, no less the stencil, etc. and sundry equipment I assume you already had and time required.
@@anshadedavana Absolutely it's not a for-profit endeavor. In a different comment he said "I'll either just keep them around, or give them to friends of mine who want them."
@dosdude1 amazing work man! I have a 2014 mini and thought I’d be able to follow along lol… yea I hate admitting defeat but think this is beyond my capabilities 😑.. Your work is impressive though!
Very interesting to see this kind of '"upgrading". Follow-up question: Will 4 x 8GB memory chips work as well? Or is 16GB really the max memory for a 2014 i7 Mac Mini?
I’m impressed with your upgrades. I was told by a guy who is a certified apple tech that the memory couldn’t be upgraded. Do you do work for other people. I have a late 2014 mac mini. I’ve never done any soldering. I would be very nervous doing something like that. How much did the parts cost and where did you find them?
I mean, officially, no, it can't be upgraded. This isn't any different from installing modchips or other hardware mods to consoles. It *can* be done, but not officially.
Going to say that the improvement wasn't as some would have expected for a few reasons one of them being the ram as LP style ram is often a bit slower than the lower density modules that are user replaceable so with this options were well limited. Also the dual core at the end of the day is still a dual core so maybe it is possible to toss in a quad but I don't know what the thermal performance of this machine is like.
How you align those chips to be perfectly placed on the board is beyond me. You would think that some kind of guide would be glued onto the circuit board with the original chip so that you could be 110% sure the pads and contacts are properly placed.
OMG, thanks man btw. my mac mini 2014 is basically no longer in use and I am working on upgrading its ram but I don't have any soldering experiences so hmmm... I was looking for a professional to do it and non of them does that in hong kong. they said, "the 2014 mac mini does not have an upgradable ram" which is not true. it is not user serviceable but definitely upgradable(by soldering). anyways, thanks for the video, I am aware that the position of the resistor needs to be changed but I don't know how to cause I don't have the schematic and/or the necessary information that denotes that. Thanks for providing such valuable information and cya.
I'm going up to Canada from Portland Next year hopefully to learn Microsoldering and smartphone repair but once I get comfortable soldering I am super excited to be able to do this kind of thing. I literally just bought a Mac Mini from late 2014 for 100 so that I could use opencore to upgrade to Monterry and run BlueBubbles server off of it but I noticed the appalling 4GB of RAM and I'm like that'd be good to upgrade.
You're in for a lot of fun! Memory is doable, because of the smaller size. Just a little cheap preheater is enough. If I'd do it again I might mark the position of the IC's before removing.
OMG, fantastic. Beyond my competence but I am going to upgrade a 2014 i5 Mac mini with an additional PCs 500Mb drive instead of the SSD drive. Hopefully this will speed things up enough. Actually I have a Mac Book Pro from 2011 which I managed to drive over. (don't ask how). I had the screen removed and have been using it to drive my tv but the OS is not upgradeable and I have VPN problems with it.
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Unbelievable cool video. Thank you for all you've done for the community of old Mac users, your patches have helped me keep so many of my machines useful!
In 1986 I cut out the 64k of memory from my first Mac and soldered in 128k with guidance from Dr. Dobbs Journal. Thought that was pretty cool but my oh my how times change! Brilliant work, sir, kudos to you!
No Mac shipped with 64k of memory.
@@kirishima638Maybe it was an Apple
@@kirishima638 kilobites of memory
@@kirishima638macintosh
Wow, just wonderful I've never seen anyone do this before, this man is very talented
It's amazing they sold this machine up until the end of 2018. We still have some of them in our labs. and we specced them pretty well at the time, they had the 2.6ghz i5, 256GB SSD and 8GB RAM. They run terribly today on Monterey, and it's officially supported! Yet we have 2012 i5 iMacs with after-market SSDs added and they run like a dream on Monterey using OCLP.
Because it's a low tdp laptop dual core vs a socketed quad core with 65w to 80w wattage.
They may possibly run a little better if you wiped and clean installed all of them with Monterey.
I am writing this from a Mac Mini 2014, 2.6ghz i5, 512GB SSD and 8GB Ram... and I am not agree with your statement "they run terribly today on Monterey". As a matter of fact, it runs smooth. I do Photoshop and Lightroom, Internet, Excel with no problem at all.
@@asphixmx mine too... its only a 4g RAM and even with HDD.. still working very well...
I have the 2012.. it has a quad core I7 and 16gb of ram.. the 2014 was a step back I didn’t know what Apple was thinking.
From a tinkerer perspective it's amazing what you did there, complete desoldering/reballing/resoldering plus programming of bios, I draw my hat and fully heartily applaud this work and dedication. From a non mac users perspective... why is there no slot for ram and a socket for cpu?
Yes I now, new ultrabooks are also guilty of soldered on cpu/ram/ssd, but up till 2013/2014 the larger notebooks still had replaceable cpu/ram and ssds. And desktops, we don't have to talk, they are fully upgradeable in most cases.
It forced you to buy the larger capacity models or ram upgrades at purchase at a significantly higher price, as you could never upgrade. I dare say it perhaps also made them more reliable being soldered ,but I’m not sure to what extent - if any. I was waiting for the 2014 to come out so I could upgrade for a much earlier model, and when it did and I saw the soldered ram and cpu, I immediately bought the just superseded quad core whose ram and storage you could upgrade - and having two more cores was a lot faster.
Yeah, good linux knowledge and non Apple hardware makes life easier. But i love my 2012 airbook which rocks Pop OS and honestly, for many years there were no comparable pc notebooks and still today build quality is impressive. So i understand the attraction of Apple devices.... And the M cpus are impressive again. Wait for mature linux support😉
Some of the older Macs had the ability to change ram and hdd but they where finicky with what ram would work it was nice though, I guess its now a bit of both upselling the higher models instead of user upgradeable plus smaller form factors making it harder to replace.
I can say regarding the CPU as to why they moved away from CPU's in both windows Laptops and MacBook's, One is that it results in an overall thinner devices and the other is from DDR3 based devices - the Signal integrity dependent (rise and fall time of high speed digital signals like DDR3 is very small order of few pico seconds - having a socket CPU adds metal socket pins adds more impedance discontinuities which in turn results in delays / corruption /slows down of these rise / fall times. with a soldered BGA CPU you minimize these impedance anomaly- this is wht they eliminated the socket cpu approach ).
@@sheldonkupa9120 what's an airbook?
I've watched this in absolute awe. This is a great work of art I'll never be able to perform.
Well done, mate!
Keep it up! I'll just save money for my new Mac Mini M2 by the end of the year.
There's no way I'll find someone as competent as you to do such a thing and still make it affordable.
Amazing project. It's incredible what we can do with older tech nowadays.
well, this is definitely an upgrade that no else is going to do
So happy to see you gave the CPU bigger balls.
dosdude, you are one epic person. That was a lot of work for such minimal gains and something tells me that wasn't why you upgraded.
Thank you for the video. Fun to watch. I ordered a preheater, flux and 4 ram IC's from Ali expres, gonna give it a go once everything has arrived.
YES! It's a win. Thank you so much
@@gjvdspamwhere i can get links?
Holy hell! I thought I was cool upgrading my 2012 mini with 16G of RAM and 256 SSD. This is hardcore. Well done! I love my mini! Have Big Sur on it and for daily home stuff it works great. At my work office I have the latest Apple gear. EDIT: Geekbench 704 / 1726 with the i7 / 2.6Ghz / 16G / SSD / 4000 Graphics.
Why haven’t you upgraded it to Monterey yet?
@@abduujabor well you’re not supposed to get Monterey for Mac mini (late 2012) since it’s not “compatible” (which is a stupid lie apple made up) for it.
But the thing is, you actually can get it! It’s just that you have to use open core legacy patcher (which is easy to use) and you need a 16+ USB flash drive to be able to use and get Monterey.
Here is the link to the video of it happening. It’s actually works and it’s legit. Link: th-cam.com/video/McmO7xP4wvI/w-d-xo.html
(Edit) I also recommend having 16 gb of ram (which is easy to change and it’s the most a Mac mini can take) to make the experience faster.
That Geekbench improvement doesn't seem exciting, but doing math it is almost a 50% better performance! That's a lot!! Great work 👏👏
You NEVER fail to amaze me with your skills!
Unbelievable, jaw-dropping stuff, I'm absolutely blown away. I take my hat off 🎩
Reballing that apu is the most difficult part because of the warping you mentioned, on the 10th gen intel had to glue a metal support bracket to the corners to avoid It
More great work thanks Collin. Any chance of showing us the board pre-heater that you use please? Thanks EDIT - I found the answer in one of the comments. Cheers. hot air station, Puhui T8280 preheater, Madell QK853 preheater, and Aoyue 4545W nozzle for doing the large BGAs.
Great job on the hardware upgrades and restoration. I'm sure the switch to an ssd will make overall everyday tasks faster and quieter and cooler operation
Dude, you are amazing...I have been following yours videos since you started making the patches for old mac...
Very impressed by dosdude1's skill and precision. This is way above my pay grade. Will say this: I've a 2012 Mac Mini, the last Mini where both RAM and drives were socketed (not soldered) and so upgrades there were plug and play. The CPU of my old Dell Latitude was not soldered either so upgrading that was also simple for this klutz. All of which is to lament that newer tech, with glued cases and soldered everything, requires dosdude1 level expertise to service.
Mate you are a wizard of computing
I still have one of the 2014 i7 Minis as a daily driver, but unfortunately only 8GB Ram, which starts to become a problem these days. Also, while it has a factory SSD, that one is very slow - slower than a budget sata SSD these days. Upgrading the SSD could help, soldering more ram myself is far out of my league, and getting someone else to do it would be expensive enough to rather save up for a used 16Gig M1 mini. Still, it's awesome to see that it can be done. Great video, dosdude1 !
i think the surface tension of the solder is strong enough to warp the hot chip when you take it off the board with the vacuum pump.try next time to flip it next on a paper towel with tweezers from the sides.i have removed cpus with tweezers aswell with 0.5mm metal blade tool.but overall you are a pro :D .keep up the good work
That really will be breathing new life into that machine. I think the i7 from that generation was a proper hyperthreaded quad core even in the 13" Macbook Pro, though it may have still been the lower powered variant. Still, it should work wonderfully with the upgraded processor and memory. Always fun to watch people keep these older machines viable with electronic wizardry.
Edit: I was mistaken, the i7 u series from that generation was only a dual-core processor. How disappointing. Still, just getting a substantially faster clock speed will make a world of difference for that mac, as will the upgraded graphics. At least as far as general computing goes. Intel Iris was never a gaming powerhouse, but it's perfectly capable for general UI tasks and video playback.
Very interesting, but too difficult for a nebbie. You are a master technician. It have been super interesting for me to known the technologie for smd circuits reparing. Thanks.
Have you considered marking the chip outline on the board before you remove the old cpu to help align the replacement chip?
I'm on a late 2014 mac mini with 4gb ram and an ssd. I think the ssd makes all the difference for me. This computer as is with the ssd is fantastic. Thanks for the information and the how to. You're super talented.
how u running the ssd? externally booted? make sure you use the usb 3.0 ports not the 2.0 ports, 3.0 is 10x faster.
I love to see so many fans of this great man. He deserve all the compliments.
That was amazing principally the reballing step, congrats!
Going to need this video now. Knowing nothing about Mac mini's I bought a 2014 Mac mini, base model. Opps, soldered on RAM :) Going to fit this into a G4 "lampshade" iMac. "
Man I think u came from another planet.. 👍👍
The performance improvement wasn’t as dramatic as 1.4GHz vs 3GHz would suggest because of turbo boost
It’s really 2.7GHz peak vs. 3.5GHz peak. Roughly 30% more performance from 30% higher peak clockspeed 👍
Never dismiss what a little bit of cache will do for performance which will add a few percent ontop of any had from clocks alone.
@@MrKillswitch88 how do i make my 2014 mac mini handle more garageband audio tracks and plugins, i went with an external usb 3.0 samsung 870 QVO and that brought me to 400 MB/s read writes which helped, but i am looking for more tweaks?
Amazing how it’s done. Very skillful. Quite interesting.
Reverse Engineering!! --- It's an ART and Science that doesn't get enough appreciation. - This guy is a gem!
legend just to align those memory contacts. and those cpu solder balls!
His skills and tools we be valuable when the SHTF.
wow i think this is your work.. GREAT!!!
Hell Yea! Great Work Sir. New to Apple due to the M1, after finding your tutorials I traded a pile of old PC Boneyard collection for some 2011 & 2012 minis; just to learn how apple did things. Thanks for the help!
Oh what a cooooool superrrrrr video and skillllssss!!!!
I DO LOVE IT!!!
Wow, your video is very good! What you did is a work of art! Very nice!
Wonderful. You are not an ordinary person, you are special.
Incredible that such an easy upgrade is possible on a Mac…
Well 'easy' - he is probably the only one in the world who is doing it, has the tools, but more important - has the knowledge.
@@SuperRogier i was cynical…
@@jpht1964 my bad, you never know nowadays. But he makes it look so easy, that is what triggered me into not recognising sarcasm ;) You only need a few tools and some software..
great stuff, cheers for sharing it.
You are a fckn genius. I see The Force is strong with you.
Looked forward to this one particularly.
What this machine deserves! I used to have one of the base model 2014 Mac minis, it was one of my first computers, and I have to say I think it's probably one of the worst Macs Apple ever made. Especially with the 5400rpm hard drive and it is slooooow. Even on the stock operating system it's hard to bear and it got much worse with APFS (and I assume further updates after that, I got rid of mine and switched to Windows!)
Why did you not install windows on it and put a ssd.
CPU and RAM may be limited in these models, but just upgrading to an SSD would make a maaaaaaasssive difference.
Yes, it is very slow. It is a good practice to test your patience. It takes about 8 minute boot time with Big Sur.
I replaced the MacOS with several Linux distros. And they run very fast. I'm glad I didn't give it to Apple to be recycled.
My experience is a bit different. I just bought this exact model for $140 USD (very cheap in Australia.. we pay more for all our technology, sadly) and first thing I did after booting into the 5400rpm HDD was put an existing 500gb Samsung Evo 850 SSD into it. Took 45mins tops, used a steel coat hanger to remove the motherboard, and it is absolutely awesome now for what I need (a second Mac for general tasks - email and web browsing). No slowness now, and I have to have quite a lot of apps open to stress it. It even runs Monterey natively (unlike my better specced mid-2014 MacBook Pro), which is apparently faster than Big Sur or whatever the most recent one was called.
@@heavypizzas6004 Can you add an portable SSD by using USB cable and boot from it? By the way, how do you open the Mac mini casing?
Nice Target Display Mode IMac’s. I use two 24-inch Apple Cinema Display with my 2014 Mac mini i7 at home. And yes I know about OCLP 😊
Wonderful experience! Thank you.
Collin, what is the progress of you installing 32gb of ram on the 2015 15” mbp? And upgrading the vram to 4gb?
You are watching a master at work 🫡
A little like having a Time Machine.
Over the years, I’ve always bit the bullet with whatever cannot be readily updated, and I’ve never once regretted it. My Macs serve me for an embarrassingly long time mostly due to that up front cash drop. Apple’s campaign against people like me means no new Macs. I’m still in the early to mid 2010s with all of my computers except for the iPadPro I’m typing this on. They are all business tools for me so upgradability is essential. Colleagues marvel at the age of machine I use with modern OS and more importantly, 2023 Pro Tools versions. Now if I could just shave a few pounds off my MBP 6,2 for flying.
Impressive work and excellent explanation.
Looks nice and professional, except the part with cleaning the CPU over a DVD player
oh god! oh my god!!! this video is going so technical OMFG!
Amazing as always. Apple probably needs to hire you to do prototype manufacturing/testing and repair.
That's a good use of an old DVD/CD ROM drive.
something therapeutic about soldering bga's
Not something I could do but great work.
you are my hero, great and patient work...
fantastic video very detailed information - thanks Dosdude :-)
Bro I love these kind of content
Really nice video. Thanks for the entertainment. Its a bit sad 2014 mac mini has only a 2 core cpu, which makes late 2012 mac mini a better choice both by the fact that you can upgrade ram and the i7 CPU being better in multi core performance thanks to the 4 cores and 8 threads and the 2012 i5 is a bit better than the 2014 i5. There is a plus however, 2014 mac mini consumes way less power than the 2012.
The graphics are better on the 2014 as well, especially the 2.6 and i7 versions which are Iris instead of HD 5000.
당신은 천재입니다. 진정한 능력자... 멋집니다.
First video of yours I've seen. Absolutely phenomenal job. I pulled the BIOS chip off of my 2014 Mac mini main board, dumped it, modified it, reflashed it, and resoldered it, but this is so beyond any of that. My only question is what is the motivation for this over buying something used (even the exact model you're upgrading to) or some other option? The challenge? Learning? Fun? Because I can't imagine any cost "savings" having to buy a Mac donor board + RAM chips, no less the stencil, etc. and sundry equipment I assume you already had and time required.
@@anshadedavana Absolutely it's not a for-profit endeavor. In a different comment he said "I'll either just keep them around, or give them to friends of mine who want them."
@dosdude1 amazing work man! I have a 2014 mini and thought I’d be able to follow along lol… yea I hate admitting defeat but think this is beyond my capabilities 😑.. Your work is impressive though!
AMAZING WORK, CONGRATS!
omg the solder balls looks hard.
Those base models are so wack - they’re basically disk caching from the moment they’re turned on until they’re turned off laugh😂. Nice upgrade dude!
🎉you really up on spec these machines
Hi will you be able to produce a patch for Macs that now will go out of system upgrades like the fabulous Mac book Air 2017 ?
The TDP on that chip is low, lower than an i7 from a Mac Mini, even the i5 4278U scores higher. Still an improvement.
Now you can sell it in order to buy a M1 Mac mini.
Great job was done! Awesome.
Amazing job as always !
Dude you should do custom orders. I'd love to see my Mac mini 2014 upgraded like that!
Very interesting to see this kind of '"upgrading". Follow-up question: Will 4 x 8GB memory chips work as well? Or is 16GB really the max memory for a 2014 i7 Mac Mini?
I’m impressed with your upgrades. I was told by a guy who is a certified apple tech that the memory couldn’t be upgraded. Do you do work for other people. I have a late 2014 mac mini. I’ve never done any soldering. I would be very nervous doing something like that. How much did the parts cost and where did you find them?
I mean, officially, no, it can't be upgraded. This isn't any different from installing modchips or other hardware mods to consoles. It *can* be done, but not officially.
You have some amazing skill level.
Is the Mac Mini a single channel ram system? If so, it might explain the underwhelming improvement.
No, it's dual-channel. After looking into it, the score it got was about the same as other systems with this same CPU. So it's working correctly.
Going to say that the improvement wasn't as some would have expected for a few reasons one of them being the ram as LP style ram is often a bit slower than the lower density modules that are user replaceable so with this options were well limited. Also the dual core at the end of the day is still a dual core so maybe it is possible to toss in a quad but I don't know what the thermal performance of this machine is like.
Wow amazing job dude
Phenomenal work!
How you align those chips to be perfectly placed on the board is beyond me. You would think that some kind of guide would be glued onto the circuit board with the original chip so that you could be 110% sure the pads and contacts are properly placed.
muahahahah i love this!!! make the impossible .....POSSIBLE!!!! Keep up the great work!!💪💪
want to see how much faster a computer would be... actually learned how to reball a cpu!
what an amazing guy how clever he is i watch his other videos too he cool 😎
you are so incredible!
you are a wizard!
OMG, thanks man btw. my mac mini 2014 is basically no longer in use and I am working on upgrading its ram but I don't have any soldering experiences so hmmm... I was looking for a professional to do it and non of them does that in hong kong. they said, "the 2014 mac mini does not have an upgradable ram" which is not true. it is not user serviceable but definitely upgradable(by soldering). anyways, thanks for the video, I am aware that the position of the resistor needs to be changed but I don't know how to cause I don't have the schematic and/or the necessary information that denotes that. Thanks for providing such valuable information and cya.
去深圳华强北。这都是小问题。几百块钱能帮你升级。很方便
it isnt upgradable as per ‘officially’ upgradable. going by your logic everything is upgradable
i just put windows on mine directly without bootcamp they run beautifully.
Great video sir!
Nice job. I got a Thinkpad x230 that could use a cpu swap😅
Excellent
I'm going up to Canada from Portland Next year hopefully to learn Microsoldering and smartphone repair but once I get comfortable soldering I am super excited to be able to do this kind of thing. I literally just bought a Mac Mini from late 2014 for 100 so that I could use opencore to upgrade to Monterry and run BlueBubbles server off of it but I noticed the appalling 4GB of RAM and I'm like that'd be good to upgrade.
You're in for a lot of fun! Memory is doable, because of the smaller size. Just a little cheap preheater is enough. If I'd do it again I might mark the position of the IC's before removing.
Crazy skills.
Amazing work :)
OMG, fantastic. Beyond my competence but I am going to upgrade a 2014 i5 Mac mini with an additional PCs 500Mb drive instead of the SSD drive. Hopefully this will speed things up enough. Actually I have a Mac Book Pro from 2011 which I managed to drive over. (don't ask how). I had the screen removed and have been using it to drive my tv but the OS is not upgradeable and I have VPN problems with it.
Awesome job!
And to think that the mac mini used to have socketed CPUs and RAM slots 😢
This was insane!
You are godlike!
I wonder if it's possible to make the same trick with Intel Mac Mini 2018, but instead replace cpu to Xeon and add ECC memory?